MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a joint campaign of the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to liberate Mosul could begin on October 19.
"Troops participating in the plan to liberate Iraqi cities, including Mosul, are purely Iraqi," the Defense Ministry official told Anadolu news agency.
Mosul is Iraq’s second-biggest city and capital of the northwestern province of Nineveh. It has been occupied by Daesh since June 2014 and declared the Iraqi capital of the so-called Daesh caliphate.
